Xavier Pierluca
Founder and Managing Partner at Enabling Qapital
Xavier Pierluca is an investment professional with 25 years’ experience, 19 of which are in the field of impact investing managing both private equity and debt funds. He has structured and raised several pioneering funds in clean cooking, access to energy, microfinance, fintech, SME finance, and healthcare for over USD 1 bn with family offices, DFIs and Institutional Investors through plain vanilla and blended finance structures.
Prior to launching Enabling Qapital, he was a founding Partner at SIMA where he structured, raised and managed one of the largest solar off-grid solar debt fund. He also engages in Corporate Finance Advisory and has led the valuation and fundraising of one of the largest global microfinance group.
Prior to SIMA, Xavier was the Chief Investment Officer of Financial Services for Bamboo Finance, a leading impact investing Private Equity manager. He had joined Bamboo Finance in 2007 as founding member of Bamboo covering Latin America, developing the investment strategy for that region prior to becoming the Chief Investment Officer in 2012, He designed the strategy, structured and raised the Bamboo Financial Inclusion Fund II, targeting SME banks and Fintech companies including mobile payments/remittances, correspondent banking and peer-to-peer lending.
Over the past nineteen years, Xavier has designed innovative financial instruments to facilitate the development of impact investing including tripartite inventory transactions, carbon project SPVs, quasi-equity revenue sharing instruments. He led the largest and most complex equity transactions involving asset and share investment and divestment simulteanously involving co-investors and several counterparties, family offices, Development Finance Institutions, Private Equity Fund and NGOs. With his team, He supported the transformation in regulated banks of five microfinance companies in diverse geographies.
Previously, Xavier worked for the Deutsche Bank Impact Investing Division where he pioneered the structuring and fundrasing of the first commercial microfinance funds. He also worked for five years as management consultant for Deloitte Consulting and Ernst and Young Corporate Finance in the United States and in France. He specialized in mergers & acquisitions and access to finance for mid-cap companies.
Xavier holds a Masters in Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a BsBA from Northeastern University. He is fluent in French, Spanish, and proficient in Romanian and Italian. He sat on the board of leading microfinance banks and investment funds globally including Banco FIE, MiBanco, Accion and Apoyo Integral. He currently sits on the Investment Committee of the World Bank Fund for Access to Energy in Burundi.